Chapter 19: A Number of Stumbling Blocks That Would Have Been Less So Had I Read Kuhn

After dinner I called Mrs. Wertheimer. Ginny had said I needed to call her, and she was right.

This was the first time I’d considered the idea that our relationship might have changed. When I met her, she’d been my teacher. Then, I’d bumped into her and she’d been nice enough to be my banker. At the time, I was an itinerant gambler and she’d facilitated my sinful and peripatetic ways. Now, I was a student again, I had identified her as my emergency contact, and I wasn’t entirely sure certain what the rules of our relationship were.

But even getting in touch with her wasn’t as easy as I anticipated. I dialed her number, using one plus dialing, and an operator came on the line.

“May I help you?” the operator asked.

“I’m just trying to call a friend in Chattanooga,” I said.

“I need your S.T.A.N. number,” the operator said.

“My what?”

“Your S.T.A.N. number,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“A Student Telephone Account Number,” she said.

“Don’t think I have one.”

“You’re a college student, right?” she asked.

“Yes,”

“Calling from (615) 555-1972?”

“Yes.”

“Before the semester began, your parents were sent a packet of information that allowed them to associate your long distance charges with another phone number as long as that phone number was a listed Bell System number,” she said, explaining the obvious.

“I don’t have any parents,” I said. An exaggeration, certainly, but I was tired of talking about it.

“Let’s see,” she said. “I show (615) 555-1972 as being assigned to Henry Baida.”

“That’s me.”

“And according to our records your mother is Margaret Wertheimer of Chattanooga, Tennessee,” she said.

“Interesting.”

“She’s not your mother?” she asked.

“No, not at all.”

“Well then who is she?” the operator asked, exasperated.

“Now, why is it you assume I’ll know who she is just because you don’t?” I asked. I was just curious.

“Sir, she’s associated with your phone number.”

“And your company’s … associations are never wrong?” I asked.

“They are reliable. Who is she?”

“Can I ask your name?” I asked.

“Nora. Operator 340F90D,” she said. “Who is Margaret Wertheimer?”

“She was my high school geometry teacher,” I said.

“And will she be willing to have your long distance charges associated with her phone number?”

“Meaning you’re going to bill her for my long distance charges?” I asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, I guess she and I can work it out,” I said.

“Thank you. Connecting your call,” she said.

“Wait. What?”

“Connecting your call, sir,” she said, tired of me.

“You don’t need to confirm with her first that I’m going to be charging long distance calls to her number? I mean, I could have picked anybody.”

“I just don’t understand why you’re being so difficult,” said Nora, and I heard the phone start ringing, indicating that the call had gone through. I wondered if Nora planned to listen in. After a few rings, Mrs. W picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Mrs. Wertheimer, this is Henry.”

Hello, Henry!” her voice brightened. “How in the world are you? How’s college?”

“Interesting. I’m learning stuff.”

“Like what? Tell me.”

“Physics, Greek, History, English.”

“And?”

“Physics is really cool. It’s easy, but I just haven’t thought about the universe that way before. All these precise mathematical formulas for working out the physical world,” I said. There was a slight pause.

“Precise?” she asked. I paused.

“Well, they’re teaching that the problems have exact answers.”

“What kind of problems?” she asked.

“Vectors, instantaneous acceleration, that kind of thing. Straight line stuff.” I could hear the scrape of her Zippo against the flint in the lighter and her first big drag.

“Look, Henry, I know it’s all fun. I remember my first physics class. But remember, none of the math is perfect. Newton came close, and people since have improved things. But when we think math, we’re people. When the universe acts itself out, it’s reality. You can’t describe the moment of a pendulum accurately with an equation any easier than you can do it with a sentence. You can say in a sentence that it swings back and forth. Equations aren’t much better, in some ways. They’re good, they’re just not perfect.” I paused to think about this.

“You’re saying the equations in my physics book don’t accurately describe pendulums?”

“Yeah. Sure. They’re approximations of reality. An equation explains the movement of a pendulum in the same way a paragraph does. But oscillators like pendulums are notoriously difficult to describe with precision.”

“I thought physics, the equations we’re studying, had been proven to accurately describe the physical universe.”

“Not really. All we can say is that they seem to accurately describe reality. But there’s no proof, the way there is in geometry. I can prove to you that opposite angles are equal. You can prove that the sum or product of any two even numbers will also be even. There’s nothing like that that in Physics. All you can do is say it seems to be accurate—what we predict by our equations seems to be pretty close to what happens when we measure it. No way to prove it.” I thought about that for a few seconds.

“Well, but if the equations always lead to accurate conclusions, surely that counts as proof.”

“Oh, good Lord no. Accuracy of prediction is meaningless in all ways,” she said. I could hear her pull on her cigarette.”

“That can’t be right,” I said.

“Henry, you can derive extraordinarily accurate predictions of the times and locations of solar and lunar eclipses if you assume that the Sun revolves around the earth. One reason the Ptolemaic system was so widely believed was the fact that it was extremely accurate in predicting events. Eclipses, transits, retrogrades—Ptolemy could predict them all. Of course his physical model, his explanation for why it was that the objects in the sky behaved as they did, didn’t match what we’ve learned since.”

“How did he explain retrograde motions of planets?” I asked.

“Planets had epicycles. Each one had a large orbit, more or less like what planetary orbits are like, only they were orbiting around the Earth. As was the Sun. But planets had a secondary sort of orbit, what was called an epicycle. The planets were kind of doing this curlicue in addition to their orbital motion.”

“Hard to imagine.”

“Think of the path of the Moon around the Earth, orbiting around as the Earth orbits the Sun.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Now imagine that exact path, the path the moon is taking, only the Earth isn’t there at the center of its orbit.”

“But the Moon wouldn’t trace that pattern if the Earth’s gravity didn’t anchor it.”

“Nobody knew anything about gravity back then. They thought that the planets and stars were attached to or moving in spheres,” she said.

“Scientists really believed in that kind of stuff? That wasn’t just popular mythology?

“Henry the only definition I’ve ever heard of ‘mythology’ that makes any sense to me is ‘mythology is other people’s religion.’ Yes, it was popular mythology, but Ptolemy lived in the second century, and educated people and astrologers believed in it too.”

“You mean astronomers?” I asked.

“Not really. There was no distinction in the second century. Ptolemy’s most famous book was about astrology. The fact that he could predict eclipses so accurately made his astrological forecasts especially prized.”

“This is weird,” I said.

“Why?” she seemed surprised that I was having a hard time with this.

“That a terracentric model could yield predictions similar to a heliocentric model. I would have thought, given orbital mechanics, which I admit I don’t understand at all, would have led the Ptolemaic idea to yield results that diverge from reality.”

There was a pause. I could tell from the sound of her exhaling that she was taking the last drag off of a cigarette and stubbing it out in an ashtray.

“Don’t start sounding too much like your professors, Henry,” she said.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Have you ever read an article by a college professor?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You knew every word you ever needed to use, except for words like ‘vector’ and ‘acceleration,’ the day Coach Pfieffer handed you your City High diploma,” she said.

“Yes ma’am.”

“So what were you saying?” she asked.

“I guess it seems odd that imagining that the Earth was the center of the Universe allowed Ptolemy to predict things so well.”

“It goes back way further than that. People before Ptolemy thought the Earth was flat and gods were driving chariots through the sky and that sort of thing. They could all still predict eclipses. Aristotle may have thought the world was round, I can’t remember, but he introduced the idea of the spheres in the heavens, and Ptolemy was considered reliable because his idea fit so neatly along with Aristotle’s, although astronomers of the day thought Ptolemy was a sort of amplification of Aristotle. Ptolemy made Aristotle more complex, but explained things that Aristotle didn’t. Planets moving in retrograde didn’t make sense with Aristotle’s spheres. But what I was going to say is that flat-earth people centuries before Christ were predicting celestial events like eclipses and planetary motion. All it takes to make predictions is persistence. Eventually you notice periodicity. Just because your predictions are accurate doesn’t men you understand what’s going on. Archimedes knew what time the sun was coming up.”

“Gack.”

“What, Henry?”

“Well, I’ve been operating on the supposition that what I was learning from teachers was objectively true. But it sounds like in Physics, anyway, what I’m learning is an approximation that has yet to be disproved. Did I understand?”

“Yes. That’s why I taught Math and not science.”

“And no matter how much I can trust the predictions of my calculations, what I’m taught may have foundations built on sand. Ptolemy looks good because he pretty much agrees with Aristotle, but then Copernicus comes along and blows them both out of the water.” There was a pause.

“Close. But when Copernicus came along nobody believed him, for almost a century,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because the old system worked so well. It predicted everything to fine detail. It explained their world view. It agreed with Christianity and Islam. All the pieces fit. When Copernicus published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium the academic and astronomical/astrological world pretty much ignored it.”

“He was an astrologer, too?”

“I don’t really know. That’s not clear. There’s no evidence he studied it. But he was a doctor, so most scholars think—“

“Copernicus was a doctor?”

“Yeah, sure. And a lawyer, too. And a priest. He spent a lot of time in college. Of course there wasn’t as much medicine as there is now. Or law, for that matter. But doctors were all expected to understand astrology.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

“Henry, this was the Fifteenth Century. Four hundred years ago. Four hundred years from now, everything we think is going to look just as silly.”

“Couldn’t possibly,” I said.

“Will certainly,” she answered.

“Gack.”

“Is it so terrible? Things change over time. Our understanding of the universe evolves, but will never be perfect.”

“No,” I answered. “Not terrible, but I just hadn’t thought about science this way, before. And this may give me some insight into something that sent me to college in the first place.”

“I thought you decided to go to college because you were loaded in Taccoa.”

“Yeah, but what had been worrying me is this variation in the way the universe works. I perceive it as a breakdown in the rules.”

“You’re not loaded now, are you?”

“No, no. You should know me better than that. What gets me is that you do the same thing a thousand times in exactly the same way, and three of them yield different results.”

“Okay,” she said, taking a drag.

“I have this working theory that the rules of the universe have imperfections, but those imperfections don’t lead to intolerably divergent results, so most people ignore the exceptions, the three out of a thousand. Odd to think that the rules of the universe have flaws, but odder still that most people don’t notice. When something weird happens, witnesses chalk it up to human factors and variables that are impossible to control. People expect strangeness and unpredictability, so shake it off when they see it.”

“And that’s not how you see the cosmos?” she asked. “Imperfect rules with unperceived flaws?” I thought for a few seconds.

“To me it’s always seemed as though the rules of the universe were an enormous checkerboard, stretching off into infinity in all directions. It’s regular, all perfect squares, and the sides of the squares are less than a millimeter per side. That’s the Universe as it should be. A plane of tiny squares stretching off in all directions.”

“Okay.” I could hear not only another cigarette being lit but the clink of a bottle on the rim of a glass.

“Mrs. W, are you having a drink?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “B and B. I’m not a savage. Go on with your checkerboard.”

“Okay. If you mark off a grid, several hundred squares, and then just start blackening them, checkerboard style, working outward from three or four randomly selected squares, most of the time, they’ll all link up into an orderly checkerboard. They’ll all agree and your checkerboard will stretch out to infinity. Sometimes, though, one of them will be out of sync with the others, and you’ll get this odd pattern of darkened squares.”

“How do you know this?”

“My math class is really boring. I doodle a lot.”

“Go on,” she said.

“So what happens is that the squares that were out of sync with the rest of the grid get sealed off. There’s a little pattern of out of sync squares surrounded by like a dark circle, a sort of city wall, like cities had in the days before cannons. But the pattern prevails. There’s a checkerboard isolated within a checkerboard. Sometimes you get these fault line-like things, but the overall checkerboard pattern always wins out.”

“Okay.”

“Can you imagine my two-dimensional checkerboard?”

“I think so.”

“Okay now think of the irregularities and the checkerboard patterns as in three dimensions.” She took a drag of her cigarette.

“Okay, I got it. The irregularities are encysted.”

“Exactly. So that three-D checkerboard is a representation of life in the same way you taught me to draw a three-dimensional graph on a two-dimensional piece of paper. Inaccurate, missing a dimension, but revealing.”

“Interesting,” she said. “Metaphysical, and therefore dubious, but interesting. So you think something’s going wrong with the universe, the rules don’t always work perfectly, but that these errors either seal themselves off or are sealed off by the fact that the rest of the universe is working according to the rules. It’s all on grid?”

“You got it,” I said. It felt good to be understood.

“It’s interesting to think about, but you’re talking about a way of organizing the universe that nobody’s going to see any evidence for.”

“True enough.”

“Then tell me something else,” she said. “Made any friends?”

“Some. There are a few guys on my floor, in my dorm, that seem like good guys. I’m a little older than the other freshmen, but some of them seem okay. And I ran into Ginny earlier today, and she reminded me to call you.”

“I was wondering if you’d run into her. Peabody’s right across the street.”

“Why’d you recommend Peabody for her and not for me?”

“Most of her family went there. Her mother went there. We came from farm people in Warren County, Tennessee. They went to get a good rural education when college was still relatively cheap.”

“What’s a rural education?” I asked.

“Peabody used to have the world’s most productive dairy heard. They taught people how to be the best farmers in the U.S. Ginny’s grandparents went there and learned that.”

“Odd. Mainly what she talked about to me was sports.”

“She loves tennis. But that dairy herd deal runs deep in her family. Until Gunner,” she said.

“Gunner?” I asked.

“Her father. A lawyer. Can’t make up my mind about him.” I was about to ask about Gunner, but she turned conversation back to me. “So what kinds of friends?”

“On my dorm floor? Well, there’s Milton, from California, and Joel Bernstein from White Plains, New York. Brian Wilmot from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Our R.A. is a psychology grad student from someplace in Louisiana I can’t pronounce.”

“A good mix?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am. There are lots more Southerners than people from elsewhere, but there are people here from all over. Mostly white, upper middle class. Some I would call rich. Michael Scott is black, and José Sanchez is Cuban. They say there’s a guy on our floor somewhere who’s a Viet Nam vet, but I haven’t met him.”

“How are your courses?”

“Greek is wonderful. Physics is interesting, but they’re going really, really slowly. Math is boring. History could be interesting, but the prof is letting his politics affect his analysis.”

“That’s stupid,” she said.

“He would say that history has always had, seen or unseen, known or unknown, a bias towards capitalism, and the fact that he admits to the influence of Marxism on his thinking and presentation merely makes him a more honest purveyor of American History than has traditionally been the case.”

“One of those.”

“Very much one of those. I think professors should be like journalists, and strain against their personal views, rather than giving in to them. At least professionally.”

“And judges,” she said, lighting another Benson & Hedges.

“Hmmm,” I mused.

“You don’t think judges should strain against personal prejudice?” she asked.

“No, ma’am, I do. It’s just in my experience, they don’t.”

“Ed Morgan did paste you one, that’s for sure,” she said. “But, really, Henry, calling yourself Leon Trotsky. Why in the world?”

“Oh, it happened in a P.G. Wodehouse story, and so it was the first thing that popped into my head.”

“You meeting any girls?”

“Well, there’s Toni from Physics. Beautiful but barking mad. In an exceedingly strange relationship with Rob. Both physics majors. Then there’s Mary Roberts from Greek. She’s very serious about her religion, seems to be Tri-Delt material , and seems taken with Brian.”

“From Cherry Hill?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised she remembered.

“Does he have money?”

“Seems to.”

“A lot of money?” she asked.

“Maybe. There’s a family sportswear business. She likes his uniform, too, I gather.”

“What kind?”

“N.R.O.T.C.”

“Well, sailors do have the best uniforms. What’s wrong with math?” she asked.

“It’s just very basic.”

“What are you studying?”

“Today it was horizontal transformations.” I could hear her whistling out her cigarette smoke in disapproval.

“Who’s your professor?” she asked.

“Anton Ladd,” I answered.

“I know him,” she said. “Kind of a pain in the ass. Like maybe he’s really constipated. Very stuck on protocol. But he’s smart. Does good work.”

“How do you know him?”

“He was at some of the early conferences on turbulence theory. He was in the audience once when I delivered a paper on derivatives of binary sequences, then I was in the audience when he presented some number theory deal. Complimenting sets of n-tuples of integers, or something like that.”

“Mrs. W., you’re full of surprises. I had no idea you’d been presenting papers at mathematical conferences,” I said. I could almost hear her shrug.

“Everybody needs a hobby,” she said.

“Ladd kind of seemed to know who you were and almost wanted to doubt you’d been my teacher. Interesting to hear how he knows you. But speaking of number theory, there’s this guy in my math class. I almost never see him because he refuses to come to class except for tests.”

“Where’s he from?’

“I’m not sure. He went to school in someplace called Lawrenceville, New Jersey, but it was a boarding school, I think, so I’m not sure where he’s from. Had a really good math program in high school and can’t stand our professor. Calls himself Stoney on account of his name, he says.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Only one test so far. He and I had the only 100s. The prof is plainly irritated by this. Not by me. I come to class and all. But he really hates Stoney.”

“Congratulations on the 100, Henry.”

“This is stuff you had me doing junior year, but thanks. Anyway, so Stoney wants to start a math club.”

“To do what?”

“He knows these other two guys who are interested in math and he wants to start a group to take on something more challenging.” I could hear her smoking and thinking about this.

“What would you do?” My turn to shrug.

“Something hard,” I said.

“Like what?”

“The only thing he mentioned was to see if we could deduce Kepler’s laws from Tycho’s observations.”

“Oh, gack, no. Henry, don’t join.”

“Why?” Unlike her to discourage an interest in Math.

“They were both crazy as coots,” she said. “Tycho was this nobleman with a common-law wife and he had all these extremely precise measurements of planetary positions because he was rich and could spend huge amounts of money on assistants and astronomical instruments. But he had no math whatsoever. He was a nobleman. Practical skills were beneath him.”

“So?”

“Tycho’s theory was that the sun and the moon and the stars revolved around the earth, and that the five planets— ”

“Five?”

“Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were it, back then. Uranus and Neptune weren’t discovered until there were really good telescopes, and Tycho didn’t have a telescope. Pluto was deduced from wobbles in the orbits of other planets, and Earth wasn’t regarded as a planet back then”

“Why is Pluto a planet? It’s not like the others,” I said.

“It’s out there. You leave Pluto alone.”

“Okay, Then if Earth wasn’t a planet, what was it?”

“The center of the universe.”

“They hadn’t read Copernicus?” I asked.

“Sure, they read it, but nobody believed him. Copernicus disagreed with what they’d been taught, and what they’d been taught explained everything pretty well. Plus, Tycho was really, really egotistical. He wanted his theory to be the one that explained the universe. He thought the Earth was the center of the universe, that the sun revolved around the Earth, and all the other planets revolved around the sun.”

“That’s insane.”

“No it’s not. If the universe were constructed like that, it would look exactly like it does now, for all intents and purposes. Think it through, later on. Imagine the Earth is stationary, and everything else is the way Tycho thought. It’s more complicated to imagine, but it would look exactly the same. It may actually be that way—there’s no way to know. But, anyway, Tycho had all these amazingly precise observations, but he had no math. No way to analyze all that data. So he brings Kepler from Austria to Prague, thinks of him as a hireling, and won’t share his data with him. Not really. He shows him some of his Mars stuff, because he’s convinced they support his inane Earth-Sun deal. Then Tycho dies, and his heirs are worse even than Tycho was. It’s all a mess.”

“But didn’t Kepler deduce the laws of planetary motion from Tycho’s observations?” I asked.

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“’Deduce’ isn’t the right word. ‘Stumbled onto’ is better. Once Kepler at long last got access to Tycho’s log books—Tycho’s dead now, remember—he made some really clever deductions. But the only reason he did was that he made a huge calculation error in the orbit of Mars. Because of that he went on and recalculated Mars’ orbital path a number of times, and eventually realized that it wasn’t circular. But if he hadn’t made a huge error in the first calculation, he wouldn’t have kept calculating. All of Kepler’s laws came from that mistake, so it’s a good mistake.”

“So why do you think we should avoid Kepler and Tycho as a project?” I asked.

“They were all nuts,” she said. “Kepler thought his mother was a witch. Tycho complained that the King of Denmark didn’t value his services enough, and complained that the emperor or whatever he was in Prague wasn’t providing him a grand enough castle. They both cast horoscopes and believed in them.”

“Crazy people sometimes have great ideas,” I said.

“More likely they don’t,” she answered. “Most crazy people have crazy ideas. But the reason for avoiding a club that wants to deduce Kepler from Tycho is that it would be extraordinarily boring. You wouldn’t recognize any of Kepler’s calculations as Math.”

“What were they?” I asked.

“Arithmetic,” she answered. “Liebnitz and Newton and the calculus you like so much came in the next century. Kepler just sat in his little apartment in Prague and re-did the calculations over and over and over until they came out right.”

“πr2 all the way?” I asked.

“Yes. Each guess took thousands of calculations. All multiplication and addition. No functions at all. A complete pain in the … neck. You don’t want to spend time on that kind of thing. Months and months of rote calculation.”

“Okay. So , assuming there’s a club, what should we do instead, then?”

“Maybe something with Maxwell.”

“Okay,” I said, hesitantly.

“You don’t like John Clerk Maxwell?” she asked.

“Wasn’t he a physicist?” I asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, the rest of these guys are math guys. I may be the only physics guy.”

“Then maybe the Lorentz transformations,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Hendrick Lorentz described a set of functions (math functions that cannot be priduced in blogspot here, if you want a copy, send me a note)

where

(a short but complex equation should be here; can't insert either objects or pictures as text),” she said. “As best I can recall.” I thought that through for a moment.

“Leaving y-prime and z-prime alone for now, that would move around a lot,” I said, after a few seconds.

“No kidding.”

“I’m having a hard time imagining the graph. It must fold back on itself a lot.”

“It moves. It changes from 45 degrees off the x axis to 45 degrees off the y axis and then back again.”

“Cool. Is it good for anything?”

“Lorentz came up with it as a way to explain the propagation of light through the luminous æther.”

“The what?”

“The luminous æther. Going back to Aristotle, everybody assumed there was something that filled space, in a way. You’ve heard of fire, air, water, and earth. Aristotle said there was a fifth element that gave definition to space. In the nineteenth century there were a lot of discoveries that indicated that light was a wave of some sort, so a lot of physicists decided there must be some sort of medium the waves were passing through.”

“Why does there have to be a medium?” I asked.

“Now you’re thinking like Maxwell,” she said.

“Why?”

“Never mind. Up until Heisenberg and Bohr and those guys, we always thought about Physics in terms of physical realities. That’s why it’s a called Physics.”

“Oddly enough, a beautiful but crazy girl said that to me recently,” I said.

“Oh, yeah? Are you interested in her?”

“No, no. To me the crazy comes through much more loudly than the beautiful,” I answered. “So why does there have to be a medium?”

“Well, they thought the closest analogy to the way light moves was the way sound moves through the air, and they though that was because of regular compressions moving through the air. The compressions graph out to be a wave, even though they’re something else. If light was a wave, there had to be something for it to be compressing. A wave seems to need something to be moving through. So they referred back to Aristotle and called the stuff æther.”

“All interesting. Fascinating, in fact,” I said. “You are ever the teacher. So why are Lorentz’ calculations important? I’m thinking people probably don’t still believe in the æther.”

“No, but people did into the Twenties. Albert saw the Lorentz transformations as an accurate description of a misunderstood process and deduced Special Relativity from them.”

“Albert Einstein?”

“Yes,” she said. I could her exhale smoke.”

“I’ll suggest it to the guys but I’m the only physics student in the proposed club. There seems to be this odd hostility between mathematics and physics.”

“Well, that comes and goes. Look, Henry, I’m sorry, but I need to get off the phone. Are you set for money?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Are you coming home for Thanksgiving?”

“Geez. I hadn’t thought about it. I don’t know where my parents or my sister are.”

“No, Henry, I meant are you coming to home Chattanooga? Do you want to have Thanksgiving with us?”

“Well, sure, thanks. I don’t have a car, though.”

“So?”

“I guess I can take a cab from the Green Ghetto to your house. And I can take the bus from Nashville to Chattanooga.”

“Henry, for Heaven’s sake. Don’t make it complicated. You can stay with me. Call Ginny and you two come down together. I’m sorry. I really have to run.”

Chapter 18: A Math Test and an Omelet and the Return of the Impossible

The following Monday, Dr. Wolfe announced that we’d have a Calculus test on Friday. I called Stoney. Actually, I called him several times, and got him on the fifth try, at about nine that night. For the first four calls, I’d hung up after the first five rings. For the fifth one, I just decided to let the phone ring for a while to see what happened. I counted the rings and he picked up on the 23d ring.

“Who the fuck is this?” he answered.

“Stoney?” I asked.

“Yes, of course, you asshole, you call Stoney’s number and let the phone ring 99 jillion times and you eventually get somebody mad enough that he picks up the phone so who in the fuck is this?”

“Henry. Henry Baida,” I answered. There was a pause.

“Vaguely familiar. Need more clues. Do I owe you … something?” he asked.

“No. I’m in your Math class. You wanted me to call you if Dr. Wolff scheduled a test.”

“Oh, fuck yes. Blue-collar lookin’ dude from Knoxville,” he said.

“Chattanooga,” I answered.

“Okay Chattanooga. And Wolff’s scheduled a test?”

“Yeah. Friday,” I said.

“What time is this class?” he asked.

“Eleven.”

“Cool. Thanks for callin’.” There was a pause. “Do I like, owe you anything for this information?” he asked.

“Nope. On the house.”

“Cool. Um, what have we studied? Over the last week or two?”

“Slope intercept and point slope forms,” I answered.

“Still with the kiddie stuff,” he said.

“Pretty basic.”

“Maybe we should form a club,” he said.

“Not following you,” I answered.

“A like-minded spirits club,” he said, after a pause. He seemed to be waking up from a deep sleep.

“When I think club I think Cub Scouts or glee club,” I said.

"And?"

“I never advanced in Cub Scouts,” I said. Mom had signed me up at Keesler, but the meetings were in the building next to the pool that had the pool table so I don’t think I actually made it to a single meeting.

“Ah, fuck it,” said Stoney. “See you Friday,” and the line went dead.

On test day Stoney actually seemed to be completely un-stoned when he showed up in jeans, white boots, a white Oxford cloth button-down shirt, what appeared to be the vest from a purple velour tuxedo, and wearing what may have been a woman’s blue satin garter as a headband. She would have been a big girl, if so. Dr. Wolff frowned unhappily as he handed Stoney his test. It was easy, but I tried to pay attention to details anyway. Stoney held it up like a magazine, flipping through the pages, shaking his head from time to time. After he’d finished looking through it he put it flat on his desk and solved the problems with short, sharp strokes of his mechanical pencil. He didn’t stop to ponder or think, so far as I could tell, and finished before I did. Once finished, he sat up and looked around, without checking his work. I finished a few minutes later, but I leafed through my test, checking my work and making sure I didn’t see any mistakes. When I was done with that, I looked up and there were still ten minutes left in the period. Dr. Wolff was staring at Stoney in disapproval, and Stoney was scratching his nose with his index finger in a way that may have been intended to suggest the possibility that Stoney was flipping Dr, Wolff off.

That, of course, was stupid of Stoney. There’s no use in unnecessarily antagonizing an adversary, but the smartest people you know are often the dumbest, too. I stared down at my test. When the boredom grew too great to stand, about five minutes, I built decent-sized Fibonacci/Cartesian triangle on the back of one of the test pages, just to keep myself occupied. Professor Wolfe eventually called time, and it was a profound relief. Stoney and I left together.

“Lunch?” he asked, when we were outside.

“Sure. Where? Rand? Croom? Branscomb?”

“Oh, fuck all that,” he said. “No college food. Let’s go to The Campus Grill. Say hi to Rosie.”

“Does she play pool?” I asked.

“Couldn’t tell you,” he said.

“Red hair?” I asked.

“Oh, fuck no. White-haired. Maybe seventy,” he said. “Wait. Did I say Rosie? I meant Roxie.”

“Do they take Meal Points?” I asked?

“No, no. It’s this little diner across the street. Not affiliated with the school.”

“Food’s good” I asked.

“No, it’s terrible,” Stoney said.

“Then why go there?”

“You ever eat at the Krystal?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “I’m from Chattanooga.”

“Ever have a good meal there?” asked Stoney. I thought for a few seconds.

“’Good’ is not the right word for it,” I said, after a pause.

“But you’re going back?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“’Good’ isn’t the right word for The Campus Grill, either,” said Stoney.

“I’m in,” I said. He didn’t lead, exactly, but I followed, through a passageway I didn’t know about between two of the hospital buildings from near the Math and Science Center to 21st Avenue, a good thing to know. There wasn’t much conversation.

“Easy?” he asked, after a few minutes, referring to the test.

“Easy,” I said.

“We go to his office for our grades?” he asked.

“Yep.” Dr Wolff had said that he would post all test grades on the door to his office, and the grades would be available two or three days after the test. Stoney hadn’t been there for that class, but he’d taken a course from Dr. Wolff before.

“I’m really into math, but I’m not getting much out of the courses,” he said. I made a gesture with my hands as if to say “So?”

“Do you like it, or are you just good at it?” he asked me. I had to think.

“I like it,” I said.

“Why?”

“I like puzzles, and I like understanding how things work,” I said. Stoney nodded his head.

“Not me.”

“You’re just good at it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “I’m also compulsive about it. I think about it all the time. Two or three times a year I’ll take acid and late at night I’ll solve Fermat’s Last Theorem.”

“What’s the theorem, then?”

“I never can remember when I wake up, and I never write it down when I’m tripping,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I like to drink when I’m on acid and it’s hard to write when you’re drunk.”

“You’d be famous,” I said. I wasn’t sure about any of this. In my experience high people think their thoughts are much more profound than they actually are and the issue of whether Henry had actually proved Fermat’s Last Theorem was by no means decided.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Plus, I always remember the last five or ten steps but not the ones in the middle, but part of the problem is that I think there ought to be a more elegant, shorter solution.”

“You could dictate.”

“Yeah, yeah, one time last year there was this really cute chick in a halter top hanging around when the long version came to me and I asked her to get a pencil and something to write on. She was just a Physics major, but she’d have enough math to take it down, and so I started telling her, and she really didn’t follow—they don’t do number theory in Physics—but she could write it down. It was fun. She was crazy as a bedbug, but God Almighty was she hot.”

“So what happened to what she wrote down?” I asked.

“Don’t know. I passed out. She was gone when I woke up. She was cute. Had on these radical platform shoes and had a Christian Dior brooch on this cheap silk-screened Godspell tee shirt.” He seemed totally unconcerned with getting credit for solving a 300 year-old mathematical enigma. We were standing at a crosswalk on 21st waiting for the light to change when I heard a shout from across the street. 21st Avenue was six or seven lanes wide and full of traffic, but I could hear the call “Henry! Henry Baida!” from the Peabody side of the street across all seven lanes. A group of three young women was standing opposite us on the other side of the crosswalk, and the one who was frantically waving her hand looked like Mrs. W’s niece, Ginny McColl.

“Hey!” I called and waved back. Stoney squinted through his sunglasses at the girls across the street.

“That’s a pretty foxy triad,” he said. “Who’s your friend?”

“Friend from home. Niece of the math teacher I told you about.”

“Peabody girl?” he asked.

“Think so,” I answered. The light changed and Stoney and I started across the street. Ginny ran out to meet us in the middle, and immediately grasped my arm.

“Okay, Henry, I have to run because we have a test but you need to call Aunt Margaret because she hasn’t heard from you since you started school and she wants to know you’re doing okay and you need to call me because I want to know the same thing plus I want to hear the end of the first hotwire story and I want to take you to play pool at this place I heard about over on Ellison. So give me something to write my number on.” We’d just taken a test so I didn’t have a notebook. I looked at Stoney and he shook his head. I pulled out my wallet and had nothing but twenties, so I handed one to Ginny. She wrote her phone number on it, folded it neatly, then slipped it into my shirt pocket. “Don’t spend it until you write the number down somewhere else,” she said, then came a little closer to me than she ever had before, frowned a little, then smiled, and said “Call me” as she ran to join her friends. Stoney watched the triad walk away, then turn into the Peabody campus mid-block. As she turned, Ginny waved at us briefly. Stoney looked at me.

“Dude,” he said.

“What?” I answered.

“Are you, like, … gay?” he asked.

“No,” I said, surprised at the question.

“Are you sure?” he said. “’Cause it’s totally cool with me if you are. I’ve had queer friends before, and I’m totally cool with that. Not that I’m gay. I’m totally, 100% straight. And would really like the phone number that really cute girl with the nice hooters and Ferragamo flats wrote on your twenty. Since if you’re gay it’s not going to matter to you. Not in the same way it would to me, I mean.”

“Okay, so which was more important to you, the hooters or the shoes?” I asked.

“Oh, hooters all the way,” Stoney said. “Good shoes, but extraordinary bod. Like magnificent. Slim. Toned. Perfect.”

“She plays tennis,” I said.

“Really? I didn’t get that competitive, country club, I-need-a-four-carat-engagement-ring vibe off her at all.”

“This is you straight?” I asked. He thought about this and looked at me.

“Yes, but which question are you asking? ‘Straight’ might mean several things,” he said.

“Well, at least two. I meant to ask ‘This is you un-stoned?’” I answered.

“Ah. Um, then yes, I am ‘straight’ in the sense of being relatively drug-free. Generally a mistake. Yes. But I thought it wise since we were taking a test. Prof. Wolff—or is it Wollffe?—can be quite the quadrilateral asshole. And thanks again for letting me know there was a test,” he said. He thought a minute. “Thinking back, though, about the day we met, I may have been under the influence of one chemical or the other. So perhaps you’ve come to know me as … one might be, pharmacologically … enhanced?”

“But not now?” I asked.

“Aside from an anguishing hangover that’s vanquished the eight aspirins I took when I woke up, no. But we are losing sight of the larger issue,” he said.

“What’s the larger issue?” I asked.

“Your relative gayness,” he answered.

“I’m not gay,” I said.

“Really, the way that Peabody girl with the nice hooters leaned on you and gave you her phone number was like astonishingly interesting to watch, as a piece of … what? Performance art? She wanting you and you not seeming to notice. I think you must be gay,” he said.

“No, really.” I answered.

”Then how do you account for you failure to give that seriously behootered cute tennis-playing Peabody girl a kiss?” he asked. “She was clearly waiting on one, and any reasonable straight man would have given her one whether she was waiting on one or not.”

“Really, Stoney, I’m not gay.” I said.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Haven’t you ever found yourself looking at my butt cheeks and wondering?”

“No, really, Stoney, I’ve never looked at you that way, not even once. I’m sure you are just as gorgeous, in your way, as Ginny. I’m just not motivated by desire the way most people are.”

“You’re weird,” he said. “We’re here.” He held the door and we walked into The Campus Grill. There were about six booths and six stools at the counter. A tiny diner that smelled like omelets. All horizontal surfaces above the floor were white patterned Formica except for the stools and the seats on the booths, which were an odd cherry preserves red. Stoney chose a booth next to the large plate glass window that made up the front wall.

“Okay,” he said “You can come here any time of the day or night, the waitress is going to be Roxie. And if you order any kind of omelet, it will be served with eleven tater tots whether you ask for them or not. Never twelve, never ten.” He lit a cigarette and took off his sunglasses, reacting to the bright sunlight coming through the window as though it was totally unexpected, then put his sunglasses back on. I looked at the menu, but Stoney didn’t

“BLT or omelet?” I asked.

“Omelet,” Stoney answered. “The fries here suck.” A spry and energetic woman of retirement age with an extremely crisp white waitress’ uniform and a folded paper cap above carefully coiffed white hair brought us utensils, napkins and water. She didn’t say anything but looked at Stoney, serious and focused, like someone taking an exam.

“Roxie, I will have a cheese omelet, wheat toast, and un-sweet tea,” he said, exhaling cigarette smoke with his words. “And maybe a cup of coffee while we wait.” She nodded but didn’t write anything down, then looked at me.

“I’ll have a bacon, cheese, and mushroom omelet with rye toast,” I said.

“Outta ‘shrooms,” she said.

“Okay, a bacon and cheese omelet,” I said.

“What to drink?” she asked.

“A large milk,” I answered.

“Skim?” she asked.

“No.”

“Two percent?”

“No. Whole milk,” I said. She shook her head disapprovingly and left without having written anything down.”

“She doesn’t seem to approve of my milk,” I said.

“Roxie moves in mysterious ways her miracles to perform,” he answered. “Perhaps you just don’t know you’re homosexual yet. You have these yearnings that you don’t yet understand. When you watched Tarzan movies you couldn’t take your eyes off of Tarzan no matter how little Maureen O’Sullivan was wearing.”

“Maureen O’Sullivan?” I asked.

“Jane. In high school, was the most dangerous part of the day for you showering after gym class?”

“Why in the world would that be dangerous?” I asked.

“Because if you stared at anything too long the other boys would notice. They’d know.”

“No. Stoney. I’m not gay.”

“Then your reaction to …” he paused for me to fill in her name.

“Ginny.”

“Is utterly inexplicable. You did not react at all.”

“I’m just not that motivated by wanting to get laid,” I said. “I focus on other things. Besides, I imagine pretty girls are getting hit on by guys all the time. I imagine they find it tiresome.”

“From what I hear they find it tiresome except when they’re interested, then they don’t hear it enough,” he answered.

“Plus, she’s very close to her aunt, who is a really, really good friend of mine. She’s the one who taught me math, and if Ginny and I were to … date, and it didn’t work out, the way things generally don’t, I wouldn’t want there to be any awkwardness between any of us.” At the mention of math his face brightened and he nodded briefly and stubbed out his cigarette. “Anyway, I’m just kind of a loner,” I said.

From where I was sitting I could see part-way into the kitchen. I couldn’t see anyone working, but I could hear the sounds of cooking and from time to time Roxie would emerge with plates. She had this odd, hopping gait and moved surprisingly quickly, the way birds do when observed up close.

“Speaking of Math and being a loner, my homo friend, I think you should join a club.”

Roxie came out of the kitchen with one of those heavy diner coffee cups that that you could use to crack a cocoanut. On the way to our table, with her bouncing step, for no reason I could see, she dropped the cup. I sat up and expected a crash but she bent down incredibly quickly and caught it again inches above the linoleum floor and straightened as though nothing had happened, hardly breaking stride.

“Whoa!” I said, as Roxie placed the still-steaming cup in front of Stoney. She didn’t notice, turned and bobbed away.

“No big deal, man. Just a group I’m thinking of forming,” said Stoney, pouring a preposterous amount of sugar into his coffee. He sipped it off, then poured in cream.

“No, no. She like dropped your coffee, then caught it just before it hit the floor, and never spilled a drop.”

“Uh-huh,” se said, slurping a still-hot sip of his coffee.

“I’m talking about something Roxie just did. Like an acrobat.”

“Okay,” she said, stirring his coffee and taking another sip.

“No, really,” I said, “Things like that just shouldn’t happen.”

“Okay,” said Stoney. “What about the math club?”

“Who are your proposed members?” I asked.

“You, me, Rasheed Washington and Cecil Murray,” he said.

I was talking to him but still thinking about the way Roxie had handled his coffee cup.

“I don’t know them,” watching her carefully.

“They’re like we are. Still haven’t hit anything hard in the math they teach here.”

“Uh, I’m not much of a joiner,” I said. Rosie ferried a sandwich and a chicken salad sandwich to someone behind me without incident.

“I’m not asking you to join my fraternity, man. Just an informal get together to talk math every now and then. Have a beer. Maybe smoke a little reefer.”

“You’re in a fraternity?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “BΘΠ”

“I wouldn’t have figured it,” I said.

“Why?”

“You seem a little more counter-culture than country club,” I said.

“It’s a pretty counter-cultural frat, as frats go,” he said, as Roxie cane bobbing our way to bring us our omelets. She held each plate on the fingertips of an upturned hand, and the motion caused the tater tots, which neither of us had ordered, on each plate to roll around. She smacked our plates down then returned to the kitchen and Stoney counted his tater tots. “Eleven,” he said. “You?” I counted.

“Eleven,” I said. Roxie emerged from the kitchen carrying my milk and Stoney’s tea. Once again, she seemed to lose her grip on the glass of milk, it fell, she dropped by bending at the knees extraordinarily quickly and her hand darted down to catch the glass of milk two inches above the floor and caught it without spilling a drop, either of milk or tea. She never even completely broke stride. “Holy shit!” I said.

“They’re just tater tots, man,” said Stoney.

“She did it again.”

“Who, Roxie?” as she bounced up to our table with the drinks. “You doing tricks Roxie?” he asked her.

“Knew I’d have trouble with that milk. Somethin’ odd about that coffee. Butterfingers today,” she said, and returned to the kitchen.

“This is just weird,” I said.

“What happened, exactly?” asked Stoney, cutting off a piece of his omelet and placing it on his toast. While chewing he upended the sugar shaker and poured a long stream of sugar into his tea, then stirred vigorously in a vain attempt to dissolve the sucrose sediment at the bottom of his glass.

“She dropped two containers filled with liquid, then caught them again just before they hit the floor, without spilling a drop.”

“Good talent for a waitress to have,” said Stoney.

“It was like impossible,” I said.

“Can’t have been," he said.

“I don’t know. Why did you order un-sweet tea if you like it so sweet?” I asked.

“It’s just not natural the way you Southerners bring tea to the table already sweetened.” He stirred vigorously for a few more seconds, then tasted it. He resumed loading bite-sized pieces of his omelet onto his toast. Our omelets were on the thin side, but mine was tasty. “So you think impossible things happen? In a mystic kind of way, maybe?” he asked. “Carlos Castaneda says they do. Of course he eats a lot of psilocybin and was probably fucked up when he said it. Or maybe it was Khalil Gibran. Did Khalil Gibran eat mushrooms?”

“I don’t know about Castaneda or Gibran, but every now and then I get the feeling that the universe isn’t as smooth as we think. That from time to time there’s some crumbling at the margins, or some inadvertent clash in the rules, a glitch, so that things that shouldn’t happen do happen anyway. Sometimes they’re so small it’s hard to notice.”

“Sounds cool. What about a math club?”

“I never seem to be able to interest anyone in my speculations about outcomes that deviate from expectations,” I said.

“For metaphysical bullshit to be interesting to anyone other than you it has to explain something. That or the other person has to be loaded,” he said. “You’re driveling about a waitress who didn’t spill your milk. So math club yes or no?”

“What would we do?”

“Pick a topic and try and figure out the math. Maybe take Tycho’s observations and see if we could deduce Kepler’s laws from them. Something like that,” he shrugged. “Just something fun.” I could see my reflection in his sunglasses. The curvature of the lenses made my nose cartoonishly long.

“All right. I’ll give it a try,” I answered. He nodded and lit a cigarette as I finished my omelet His plate was completely clean. The next time Roxie passed by he raised his coffee cup at her and she returned with the pot to fill it. She still had her bird-like way of moving, but no acrobatics.

Just before she turned, Stoney said “Roxie, I think my gay friend Henry is ready for the check. She immediately produced it from the pocket of her apron and put it on the table without looking at it. He pulled out his wallet as though to pay, then winced. “Fuck.” I raised my eyebrows inquisitorially. “Tapped out. Fuck. This is what comes of not doing drugs. You got cash?”

“Sure,” I said, and put a twenty on the table. Roxie swooped in and picked it up almost immediately.

“So you really don’t like my ass?” he asked

“Oh for Christ’s sake Stoney,” I answered.

“No, really,” he said. “I have a very nice behind.” Roxie came back with my change, including lots of ones to facilitate tipping. I put down a larger tip than custom requires but it still didn’t seem like much money, so I put down another dollar, then picked them all up and put down a five.

“Jesus, Henry,” Stoney said, standing. “You’re not trying to get her to blow you.” He said goodbye to Roxie, then went out the glass door first. A few feet outside he stopped, still ahead of me, and looked over his shoulder. “Just take a good look at my heiney. It honestly doesn’t do anything for you?”

“Give it a rest, Stoney.”

Chapter 17: Conversations in the Croom

Chapter 17: Conversations in the Croom

A few days later I was hungry for lunch but not in the mood for cafeteria food so dropped in on the Commodore Room right next door. It a grill that served burgers and sandwiches but was cash only, no meal points allowed, known to students as the C-room or just Croom. Next door to the C-Room was the campus bookstore and downstairs was the post office, but at this point in our story I was hungry and so was focused on the C-Room above Rand Hall’s other charms.

I got a double cheeseburger with fries and ice water, had the usual protracted conversation with the cashier explaining that I had water, not Sprite, and so should be charged accordingly, and found a table. As I was taking a second bite of my cheeseburger, a pretty girl with a slight squint came up to my table with her tray.

“Is this seat taken?” she asked. I looked up from my Time magazine and recognized her from my Koine class.

“Not at all,” I said. “Aren’t you Mary Roberts from my Greek class?” I asked, standing.

“One of them, yes,” she said, sitting down and putting her tray on the table, “but I wasn’t sure you’d recognize me?”

“Of course I do,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I?” I sat as she sat.

“I get the feeling that you’re pretty focused on your studies?” she said. “Like maybe you’re so into what you’re studying that you don’t have enough time to pay a lot of attention to everything else?”

I thought a second. “Well, I did come to school here to study, I guess.”

“And, like, you love Jesus?” she asked.

Lordy.

“I love the Bible,” I said.

“Oh, me, too,” she said. “What’s your favorite book?”

“James,” I answered. Her expression changed a bit into a slightly puzzled frown, head cocked slightly sideways.

“You know, like I’m sure I’ve read the whole New Testament and all, but I honestly don’t remember a Book of James.” She looked at me sideways. “You’re sure it’s in the New Testament? You’re not thinking of John?”

“No, no” I said. “James. Right between Hebrews and First Peter.”

“First Peter?” Lordy.

“Yes. There’s a book called First Peter that claims to be a letter from St. Peter to churches in a lot of different places.”

“Like Paul wrote?” she asked.

“Yes, although it seems to me St. Paul was writing letters to churches he’d founded, mostly. Except for Romans. Peter’s letters don’t seem to be to people he knew. The Peter letters almost seem like they’re arguing with Paul.”

“That can’t be. The scriptures are in agreement?” she said.

“Okay,” I answered. She was eating, so I took another bite of C-Room double cheeseburger and ate a few of my still warm but no longer hot French fries.

“So have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?” she asked. I thought about this for a few seconds. I took another bite of my cheeseburger.

“Not the way you have,” I said, after I swallowed. She was less than horrified and closer to jocular than I expected at my response.

“How many ways are there?” she asked. “The only way to salvation is through the Lord.” But she was smiling. She was twirling the fork in her hand and not really eating her salad. I thought for a minute and ate two French fries in what I hoped was an appropriately contemplative manner.

“I understand your point of view,” I said. “I’ve read the Bible many times, and will continue to read it. It’s the most fascinating book in the world.”

“Of course you’re right,” she said. “It’s the most important book in the world?” She looked slightly sad for a few seconds and finally ate a bite of her salad, looking down at it so that our eyes no longer met. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“ Not at all,” I said. She thought for a few seconds and ate some more salad.

“What makes you think you understand my point of view?” she asked.

So I had to think. “Well, I guess I’ve talked to a lot of born-again Christians before,” I said. “There were a lot of Jesus freaks at my high school.”

“And so you assume we’re all alike?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “I’ve just noticed a certain similarity in what people say. If they’ve had a conversion experience, I mean.”

“But don’t you see?” she asked. “That completely misses the point. Christianity is a religion of personal experience? Each Christian experiences God, knows Christ, experiences worship, in his own individual way. To generalize my experience with Jesus with anyone else’s is just a big mistake.” I thought about this before answering.

“I don’t mean to denigrate either Christianity or your experience with it,” I said.

“I understand you think you’re being polite, but can’t you see that you’re being patronizing?” she asked.

“Maybe, maybe not,” I said.

“I believe, I know that Jesus Christ is my personal Savior. I believe He should be yours, too. I’m not an idiot, some hayseed who has quaint religious beliefs you might study in Anthropology. I got the same SATs as you and go to the same college you do and I’m just as smart as you and this is what I think. I’m not intellectually lame. I’ve read and I’ve studied and I came to this conclusion,” she said. I thought for a few seconds.

“I don’t think faith experiences translate into reason very well,” I said. “You can say that, but at bottom you had a faith experience, a conversion experience, that is impossible to understand for someone who hasn’t had one.”

“But that is an aspect of Christianity that is unique? Honestly, I don’t know if it’s unique. I haven’t really studied any other religions. Thou shalt not learn the ways of heathens. But Christianity is a religion of personal conversion? So in the end, being a Christian is a personal experience, and Christianity is personal to each Christian.”

“So all Christians experience it differently?” I asked. She shook her head.

“We experience it together and the same, too,” she said. “In church. In smaller gatherings. In our families when we pray.”

“I guess my experience just doesn’t overlap with that too much,” I said. I took another bite of my cheeseburger, still slightly warm. My fries were now cold. How do they go from being hot to cold so fast? I added salt and ketchup on them, which helped.

“Okay, so what’s your experience?” she asked. “”You say you love the Bible, but you haven’t accepted Jesus as your savior?” I finished my cheeseburger and re-ketchupped my fries before answering.”

“I’m not a person of great faith,” I said. “I wish I could be sure about all of this, but I’m not. I wish I could be like you, sure that there’s a god and that He has a plan for my life, but I’m not that guy.” She shook her head.

“I can’t understand, I guess?” she said. “To me it’s pretty clear. And you say you read the Bible?”

“Yes,” I said. “Regularly.” I did not point out that she, a person who appeared to be unfamiliar with the Book of James or Peter’s Epistles, had little room to challenge the Biblical literacy of others. I thought for a few seconds. “So you think God made us all?” I asked.

“Of course?” she said.

“So God made me the way I am?” I asked.

“Of course?” she said.

“Okay, well, when He made me He made a person with high measures of doubt and skepticism. A person who needs concrete evidence, who can’t really accept the Bible as proof of itself.” She thought for a few minutes, looking down at her unfinished salad.

“God gives us these challenges to give us an opportunity to exercise free will. To use our faith?” she said.

“Yeah, well. He gave me too much doubt to leave room for much faith,” I said. “I want to, and wish I could, but it’s not there.”

“Why?” she asked, a little too urgently for the C-Room. “It’s all around you. It’s on every page of the Bible.”

“I know that people really find that the Bible really strengthens their faith, but sometimes I wonder if they’ve read it. There are some awful things in it.”

“Awful things in the Bible? Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

“And you say you’ve read it all the way through?” I asked.

“I think so. Not straight through, of course.”

“Then why do you think you’ve read the whole thing?” I asked.

“People have been reading it to me since I was a baby,” she said. “We go to church three times a week. I’ve been reading passages from it my entire life. I think that in all those years I must have read the entire Bible. Just not straight through.”

“Do you know the story of Tamar at the gate?” She frowned and shook her head.

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” she said.

“Well, you’d remember if you’d read it,” I said.

“Why?”

“It’s very … racy,” I said. “The kind of thing that would stick if you heard it in childhood.”

“You mean like dirty?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t say dirty, but it’s racy, for sure.”

“And it’s in the Bible?” she asked.

“Sure. There’s lots of racy stuff in there. You really ought to read it straight through. There’s a lot of it that would be exceptionally inappropriate for Sunday school.”

“So what’s the story of Tamar at the gate?”

“It’s really a story of Judah and how cheap he was,” I said. “His whole family was, I guess.”

“You’re calling Judah a ‘he’?” she asked. “I think of Judah as a tribe or a country?”

“You’re right. But Judah was one of Jacob’s sons. He founded the tribe that became the country after they slew enough Canaanites.”

“So what was the skinny on this Tamar at the gate? I want to hear a racy Bible story?”

“Okay. Judah had three sons. He brought Tamar home to be the wife of the oldest, who was named Ur, I think. Ur was wicked in some unspecified way so God smote him, leaving Tamar a widow. Under the custom of the day, you were to expected to take your brother’s widow as your wife, and Judah’s next son, named Onan, took her to wife. Unfortunately for poor Tamar, Onan was wicked in a very specific way, although many college students would disagree, so God slew him, too.”

“How was he wicked?” she asked. I paused.

“The Bible somewhat euphemistically says he ‘spilled his seed.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“He was practicing a form of birth control. A method my high school health teacher said was unreliable. Under the law of the day, if Tamar conceived by Onan, the child would be regarded as Ur’s progeny, not Onan’s, and he didn’t want that, so he was trying to avoid getting Tamar pregnant. By the way, one of the funny things about this story is that Onan’s name became synonymous with another activity that likewise produces no children, but about which Genesis is silent.”

“What?” she asked. I shook my head.

“You’d be embarrassed,” I said.

“You think you know who I am again?” she said.

“Good point. What I meant to say is that I’d be embarrassed.”

“Is this the racy part?” she asked.

“Not really.”

“Why can’t you just tell me?” she asked.

“I’d blush, and I’m not at my best when I’m blushing. I think this is something you should learn in private. Just remember the name, Onan, and look up ‘onanism’ in your dictionary.”

“So what’s the racy part?”

“Judah had one more son, but rather than have him marry Tamar, or keep Tamar in his own house, he sent her back to her father to live, claiming that the third son was too young to get married, so the widow Tamar went back to town, childless. Some years later Tamar heard that Judah was coming to town to get his sheep shorn, so she hatched this plan. She covered herself in a veil and hung out on the road by the town gate, which signaled to people of the day that she was a prostitute awaiting hire.”

“You’re telling me that the word ‘prostitute’ is in the Bible.”

“Well, yes, but not frequently in the King James, and if memory serves not at all in Genesis. I think it refers to Tamar as a harlot,” I said.

“So why is she dressing up like a hooker?” she asked.

“Enough time had passed that she knew that Sheliah should be grown—“

“Sheliah’s the youngest son?” she asked.

“Yes. So he’d grown up, and nobody had come to arrange for her to marry him, which irked Tamar.”

“I still don’t see what dressing like a hooker is going to do for her,” Mary said.

“So she’s waiting by the gate, and sure enough, Judah and a buddy come riding up, Judah sees Tamar, has no idea who she is and can’t see her face, but finds her quite fetching, and says ‘I wouldst come in unto thee,” or something like that. She told him that there was a fee associated with this service, and he offered to pay her one goat to come in unto her. She says ‘I don’t see any goat,’ and he said “I wilt gladly pay you a goat on Thursday for sexual favors enjoyed today.’ She agreed to his terms but required collateral for the promised but thus far unseen goat, so he gave her his staff, his bracelets, and his seal, whereupon their deal was … consummated. So to speak.”

“You’re saying a biblical patriarch had sex with his own daughter in law?” she asked, a little too loudly. Several people at nearby tables looked at us briefly.

“Yes. But he didn’t know who she was. She was just a pretty girl in a dark veil.”

“But that’s almost like incest,” she said, disgusted. “It’s just so … sordid?” I decided now was not the time to tell her about Lot’s daughters. “Is that the end of the story?” she asked

“No. A day or two later Judah sent his buddy back into town to give her the goat and get his stuff back, but the buddy couldn’t find her. She’d taken off her veil and returned to her father’s house dressed like a proper widow. Judah was worried about his reputation and expended some effort to find her, but couldn’t. One of the weirder things about the story is that he doesn’t seem to have been worried that his reputation would suffer if people learned that he’d had sex with a prostitute, he was worried that people would think he hadn’t paid her. A refreshingly abrupt take on sexual morality, I think you’ll agree.” She made a face and shook her head briefly.

“Is that it?”

“No. You haven’t heard the punch line. Tamara was now pregnant by Judah. Several months later Judah heard about how she had shamed the memory of his sons by whoring, and yes, ‘whoring’ is in Genesis, so Judah dashed over to Tamar’s father’s house demanding an explanation and suggesting that maybe she might ought to be burned at the stake for her sins. She pulled out the staff, the bracelets, and the seal and said ‘The man who owns these things is the man who didst knock me up.’ Everybody recognized Judah’s staff, bracelets and seal, and much hilarity ensued. Judah said, ‘Okay, thou hast got me,’ and presumably arranged to support her. Either that or married her off to Sheliah.”

“Ick, no?”

“Why ick?” I asked.

“Imagine marrying someone who’s had sex with your father?”

“The entire male side of the family, actually. It would make for awkward talk at family reunions, that’s for sure,” I agreed. She made faces and shook her head a few times.

“What’s the moral?” she asked.

“I’m not a rabbi or a priest, but my guess would be something along the lines of ‘Don’t be a cheapskate where family obligations are concerned. Even if God doesn’t smite you, you’ll wind up looking like a fool.’”

“You say this is in Genesis?”

“Yes. Chapter 38, I think,” I said.

“I’m seriously going to look this up tonight,” she said. “I think you just have to be making parts of this up. Or seriously embellishing it.”

“You really ought to read it cover to cover,” I said.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know how to ask my pastor about this. Or even my mother. Anyway, I gotta go? It’s been … interesting?” She smiled sweetly but somewhat artificially, stood, said “Groovy,” and was about to walk away when Milton and Brian from my dorm showed up, said hi, and made to sit down. Brian was wearing a United States Navy uniform, which was unexpected. He was without cover, which his C.O. would not have liked, and was wearing rank insigniae I did not recognize. There were little anchors on his shoulder boards.

“Hi, Mary,” said Brian.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said, and put her tray back down. “You look sooooo good in uniform.”

“Hi,” said Milton, and put out his hand towards Mary. “I’m Milton.” She didn’t notice. Mary sat down, so the rest of us did, too.

“So have you read the assignment for our English class?” Mary asked Brian. She resumed eating bits of her salad, which she seemed ready to throw away a few seconds before.

“Not yet. I oughta introduce everybody, I guess, on account of I’m the only one here who knows everybody. Mary, this here’s Henry Baida, he lives down the hall from me.”

“Him I know, she said, and flashed a smile at me, and then one back at Brian.

“This here’s Jimmy Milton, also from the dorm,” he said.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said. Milton stuck out his hand and opened his mouth as if to speak, but she had already turned her attention back to Brian,

“So do you like Eliot?” she asked Brian.

“Who?” he said.

“T.S. Eliot.” Brian stared back blankly. “He wrote the poem we have to read by tomorrow,” she said.

“Which one?” he asked.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” she said.

“Oh, yeah,” he answered. “We read that in high school. ‘I grow old, I grow old, I will wear my trousers rolled.’”

“That’s it!” she said, a little too loudly. “So you love Eliot?”

“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know that I understand it all, but some of it’s fun to think about.” Even I could tell that he was just trying to think of things she’d like to hear.

“Are you going to be an English major?” she asked. Milton was eating his sandwich, munching on his potato chips, shaking his head at pretty much all of Brian’s answers to Mary’s questions.

“No, I’m thinking I’ll go Ec./B.A.,” he answered.

“Eckbah?” she asked.

“Economics and Business Administration,” he said. “Sorry.”

“How funny,” she said. “I just naturally assumed you were more of an artist than an economist?”

“I dunno,” he said. “We don’t have to declare ‘til, what? Sophomore year? I was thinkin’ business on account of my Pa has this business and he wants me to come into it and it sounds like a pretty good gig, but it’s gonna be the same business whether I major in business or underwater basket weaving, so I dunno. Plus I got like this Navy trip to deal with, too.”

“What kind of business?” she asked.

“In Ec/BA?” he answered. “Doesn’t matter. Any kind of business.” He frowned in puzzlement.

“No, no, I’m sorry?” she said. “I mean what kind of business is it your father is in?”

“Oh. Gotcha. We make sportswear,” said Brian. Milton, lunch finished, propped his head on his right hand and looked out the window toward the Old Science building in silent despair, shaking his head at what he considered to be Brian’s inept responses to Mary’s questions.

“Like shoes?” she asked.

“No, no. Like tee shirts. Sweat pants. Shorts.”

“How fun!” she said. “And you’re in, what, the Navy?”

“Yeah. Sure. NROTC.” She frowned and shook her head. “Naval ROTC.”

“ROTC?” she asked. Milton looked at her, trying to decide if she was an idiot or not.

“Reserve Officer Training Corps,” said Brian.

“So you’re like a sailor?”

“Yeah. When I graduate I’ll be an reserve ensign in the Navy. That’s an officer. I’ll serve for three years.”

“And a reserve officer is one that only gets called up when they call up the Reserves?” she asked.

“No. I’ll serve even if the Reserves don’t get called up,” he said. “Being a reserve officer doesn’t make me part of the Reserves.”

“Why not?” she asked. Brian paused and tried to think through his answer.

“They’re like two different things,” he said. She made a slightly frowning face and looked at her watch.

“So after you graduate you’re going to be on a ship with nothing but men for three years and a Naval officer?”

“Yeah. I want to do jets.”

“Meaning you want to be a pilot?”

“That’s Air Force talk. In the Navy, we call them aviators. Naval Aviators.” She smiled sweetly at him.

“Where’s your hat?” she asked. Brian’s face registered instant concern. He looked around, patted himself, looked at the floor, thought back.

“Oh, fuck!” he said. “I musta left it at the Training Center. They make us learn knots and shit. Oh, Hell. The C.O.’s gonna kick my ass.” He stood immediately and scrambled towards the door, leaving his tray behind. Mary looked at him leave and smiled sweetly at his departing figure.

She looked at Milton and me. “Do you know if he’s Christian?” she asked.

“Hi, I’m Milton,” said Milton, extending his hand.

“Hello. Milton what?” she asked.

“Jimmy Milton,” he said. “It’s a last name.”

“So do you know if Brian’s accepted Jesus as his personal savior?” she asked.

“He hasn’t said,” said Milton.

“What can you tell me about him?” she asked, looking back and forth between us.

“All I know is that he’s from South Jersey. Cherry Hill, down by Philly,” said Milton. She looked at me.

“He’s a Phils fan,” I said. She stared back blankly. “He likes baseball and follows the National League. His favorite team is the Philadelphia Phillies, which is on the verge of being eliminated from the playoffs. He doesn’t approve of the Designated Hitter Rule.” Milton rolled his eyes.

“The what?” she asked.

“The Designated Hitter Rule.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s a rule in the American League that allows a player who does not play a defensive position to appear in the line-up.” She gave me a confused look.

“So it’s a sports deal?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, and stood, with her tray. “Fellahs, it’s been a pleasure,” she said, and walked off.

Milton pulled out a cigarette and lit it. It was brown and slightly slimmer than most cigarettes I saw. He lit it from a matchbook with one hand by curling the match around to the striking surface with his thumb. I’d never seen a cigarette like this before and wasn’t entirely sure what he was smoking.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Sherman,” he asked, and pulled a red pack of Shermans out of his shirt pocket to show. He shook it towards me to offer me one.

“No, thanks,” I said. “Don’t smoke.” He put his Shermans away.

“So what’s your take on Mary’s take on Brian?” he asked, staring again out the window.

“She’s interested.”

“Ya’ think?” he answered.

“I take it you agree?”

“She’s about to throw herself at him like Vida Blue would throw to Pete Rose in a World Series game.”

“Something about a man in uniform,” I said.

“I’m never gonna get laid,” he said. He stared out the window and smoked his cigarette. “You N.L. guys are so hidebound,” he said. “There’s a designated hitter. Get used to it.”

“So is a baseball,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“Hidebound.”

“No doubt you think that’s clever.” I did chuckle. Milton rolled his eyes and started moving the remnants of Brian’s lunch onto his tray so he could clear the table when we left. We sat in silence while he finished his cigarette, which he dropped to the floor and extinguished with the toe of his shoe. We were just about to get up when Toni and Rob came up, books in hand. Gack.

“Excuse me,” said Toni, sounding exasperated, as always. “If we join you will we interrupt your male-only rituals?”

“Actually, we were just leaving,” I said. “I’m sure you guys would like to be alone, so …”

“No, you need to stay here to watch our stuff,” she said, placing her books on the table. “We’ll be right back. She was wearing her usual bell-bottomed Levis and denim jacket, but the jacket was over a bright red blouse with some sort of crocheted top underneath. It was warm out, and the rest of us were in short sleeves. After she put down her books she hung her jacket on the back of her chair, then hung her red blouse over that, revealing a crocheted tube top that covered up not as much of her as modesty usually requires. She hovered over the chair fussing with and straightening the blouse so that the seams lined up with the seams of the jacket underneath for a few seconds—not long but too long. She was a funny girl. Rob watched mutely. I glanced over at Milton, whose slightly widened eyes were fixed on her tube top. “All right. Let’s go,” she said to Rob, when her garments were aligned. She frowned at her neatly-stacked books, straightened them in some miniscule way, then turned and walked towards the food service area.

“Is this okay, fellahs?” Rob asked, with a worried expression.

“Sure,” said Milton.

“I was just about to go.” I began.

“No, you’re staying,” said Milton. “You’re going to introduce me to .. these nice people.” Rob thanked us and followed Toni. Milton watched Toni as she walked away.

“Wow,” he said.

“Milt, she’s an absolute head-case,” I said.

“Did you see those knockers?” he answered. He shook his head in disbelief.

“Milt. Really. She would drive anybody other than Rob absolutely crazy,” I said.

“And that stomach, my God, it was as flat as .. what?”

“A pancake,” I suggested.

“Not an adequate metaphor,” he said. “What else is flat? A plate glass window? The griddle at McDonald’s?”

“A pool table,” I said.

“Yes! Perfect! And those legs. Longer than …”

“The Mississippi River,” I offered.

“Yes, excellent,” he said. He spent the next several minutes thinking of metaphors for Toni’s waist, breasts, hair, eyes and behind, speculating on her libido all the while, and was still at it when they returned with their trays a few minutes later. She had a tuna-fish sandwich, an opened can of Tab, and a cup of ice, he had what may have been a chicken salad sandwich, fries, and a carton of milk. I stood when they showed back up, Milt didn’t. Toni looked at us before she sat down.

“So you’ve been talking about me,” she said, still standing.

“No, no,” said Milton. “We’ve been talking about the pros and cons of the Panama Canal Treaty,” said Milton.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, flopping into an empty chair and dropping her tray harder than she needed to, as if to punctuate her exasperation. Her Tab and her cup of ice both bounced and then fell over, spilling ice and foaming soda all over the tray, but without getting onto her tuna fish sandwich, sitting on its plate. She made no effort to right the soda can, and we all watched it gurgle out onto the tray, except for Rob, who put down his tray and ran off, I assumed to fetch wads of paper napkins.

“Look at this mess, she said. “25 hundredths of a liter of Tab shot to Hell. I just don’t understand what it is with men.” She looked Milton and I, one at a time, shook her head dismissively, then looked straight down at the ice and soda surrounding the plate on which her sandwich rested.

“Oops,” said Milton. “I’m Milton,” he said, smiling and extending his hand. She seemed not to hear him, didn’t look up, and Milton’s hand hung over the table for a few seconds before he withdrew it as she appeared to make a discovery about her tray.

“Oh, my God!” she said, too loudly for the Croom, and pronouncing “God” as “Gawad,” almost but not quite two syllables. “I have a little mini containment vessel in my lunch!” She looked up at Milton and I, both uncomprehending. As she looked at us, one at a time, we both shook our heads. We didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Nuclear reactors are all built within a containment vessel, a huge concrete and steel basin, so that if there’s a meltdown of the reactor core, the meltdown will be contained within the structure,” she said, looking back and forth between us. “The AEC requires it. I checked.”

“Cool,” said Milton, looking her in the eye, not letting his eyes drop to her crocheted top.

“So like The China Syndrome couldn’t have really happened, although, like, nuclear energy is still a completely bogus idea. No way to close the fuel cycle.” She looked up at us and received, from me, the “what the fuck are you talking about now”? look she usually got from me and, from Milton, the “oh my God how I’d love to see how you look naked” look he usually had around women.

Rob showed up not with paper napkins but a dry tray, quickly transferred Toni’s sandwich plate to the dry tray, then took the wet tray away. As he did so neither Toni nor Rob took any notice of each other. Milton frowned, and I avoided starting a conversation with either. Toni stared at the ceiling in an elaborate effort to avoid looking at Rob. Milton, always captivated by a pretty girl, did not seem to be aware of Rob, either.

“So where are you from and what’s your major?” she asked Milton, as Rob left to buy her a new Tab.

“California and probably Philosophy.”

“Los Angeles or San Francisco?” she asked.

“Marin County.”

“Don’t know it,” she said.

“North of San Francisco.”

“Democrat or Republican?” she asked.

“There are no Republicans in Marin County,” he answered. Rob returned with a fresh glass of iced tea, placed it on Mary’s tray and sat down.

“What’d I miss?” asked Rob, placing a can of Tab and a glass of ice on Toni’s tray. Without acknowledging him, she poured her Tab over ice, exactly half-full.

“Milton here is from north of San Francisco and is thinking of being a Philosophy major,” I said.

“Or maybe a double major in English and Philosophy,” said Milton.

“Is that how you’re friends?” asked Rob. “Some mutually double major trip?” I shook my head.

“Same dorm floor,” I answered.

“Isn’t Philosophy just irrelevant bullshit?” asked Toni. I glanced at Rob, who looked down quickly and stared intently at his egg salad sandwich, placidly stuffing Fritos into his mouth.

“Oh, no. Not at all,” he answered, surprised by the question. “I think Philosophy examines the greatest questions of the universe. Of history. Of mankind.”

“Exactly. Mankind. All men. All D.E.W.M.s” Toni said.

“Dooms?” Milton asked.

“No. D.E.W.M.s,” she repeated.

“Doo-ems?” asked Milton.

“Dee, ee, double-you ems,” she said, taking an aggravated bite of her tuna sandwich.”

“Rob, can you translate, please?” I asked. “We’re freshmen. We don’t speak Toni.”

“She means dead European white males,” he said, speaking with his mouth full, which would no doubt have bothered his mother. “It’s an acronym.”

“Obviously,” said Toni. Milton thought for a minute. He was trying very hard to like her.

“So you’re suggesting that Philosophy is bad because it was written by dead European white men?” he asked, tentatively.

“I’m saying that Western culture is phallocentric, limited, sexist, biased, prejudiced, and patriarchal,” she said, waving half of her tuna sandwich at him in an almost threatening manner and nearly knocking over he second Tab.

“Because it was written by men?” he asked.

“A certain kind of man,” she said. “Where is the place of Native Americans or Blacks in Western Philosophy?” Milton thought for a minute.

“I really don’t think Socrates knew many Blacks or Indians,” he said.

“Exactly,” she said, making a gesture with the remains of her sandwich that indicated that she had won the argument. Milton wasn’t entirely sure what point had been made.

“Henry, couldn’t you say the same thing about Physics?” I really didn’t want to get dragged into a Toni argument. It was hard enough to watch.

“How so?” I asked.

“Aren’t they all … dee ee double-you ems?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” I said. “Some of our white males are living. And some of them aren’t European.” He thought, then nodded silently.

“So the big ideas of Western Culture aren’t relevant, but calculating …” he looked at me.

“Today it’s instantaneous acceleration and the velocity of freely-falling objects,” I said.

“But calculating stuff like that is?” he asked.

“We’re describing the physical world. That’s why it’s physics.” she said. She took one of my French fries and dropped it onto my plate. “See. Gravity. Real world stuff. What do you learn in Philosophy?”

“Ethics. Morality. Epistemology. The nature of knowing and thinking. Stuff like that.” He shook out another cigarette, put it between his lips without lighting it, and looked out the window.

“You can’t smoke in here,” she snapped. “It’s against the rules.”

“Oh, I assure you I have no intention of lighting it inside,” he answered. “I believe we have a moral obligation to abide by rules designed to protect the public health. I think you’ll find most philosophers agree on this.” She glared at him but he didn’t notice because he was staring at her breasts somewhat wistfully. I think he’d tried to restrain himself as long as he thought he might have a chance with her.

“Rob I have to go. I have an appointment,” she said. They both rose at the same time and left to return their trays, leaving their books.

“Milt, she’d drive you crazy,” I said. “They sit on either side of me in Physics every day and they bicker incessantly.” He looked out the window mournfully and watched the passers-by for a few seconds.

“Great rack,” he said.

“She’s utterly insane,” I answered.

“You have to expect to put up with a certain amount of … difficulty to be around a girl who looks like that,” he said, philosophically. “For, certainly, if you’re not willing to put up with it, someone else will. She’ll never be lonely, and so would never have any motivation to change whatsoever. So one would have to accept that. She even wears Earth Shoes.”

“What are Earth Shoes?” I asked.

“They’re this healthier kind of more holistic kind of shoe that’s better for your body than regular shoes. I wore them back in San Rafael but don’t here because everybody wears Topsiders and shit. But back to Toni. How can you fail to see the attraction?”

“She’s nutty like a can of Planter’s peanuts,” I said.

“You may not be aware of this, but peanuts are not actually nuts at all. They’re a form of bean.”

“Yes, I know,” I answered. He propped his wispily-bearded chin on the hand with the cigarette and turned to look at me.

“Really? Most people don’t know that,” he said.

Toni and Rob came back to pick up their books. I looked, and she was wearing very strange looking, duck paddle-like things on her feet that seemed to be halfway between shoes and sandals. I’d never seen anything quite like them. Toni put on first her red blouse, then her jacket, then picked up her books and looked straight at Rob. “Ten,” she said. “An hour.”

“Can do,” said Rob. She turned and left. Milton watched he leave, ruefully enjoying the view.

“Man, can I ask you a question?” Milton said to Rob. Rob sat back down, almost surprised to be asked a question.

“Sure,” said Rob.

“Is she always like that?”

“Like what?” Rob asked.

“Argumentative, difficult, unappreciative, bitchy.” Rob shrugged.

“She has her own way of seeing the world, I guess,” he said. “What do you think, Henry?”

“Yeah, well, that was about par for the course in my experience,” I answered.

“She says she likes for us to be with Henry because we don’t squabble as much when he’s between us,” Rob said.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said.

“And you’re always having to wait on her like that?”

“I don’t mind,” he answered. He shrugged. Milton lit his cigarette and took a long drag, exhaling through his nostrils.

“Why?”

“I’m happy,” Rob said, and shrugged again.

“What’s in it for you? Ego strokes for being seen with a beautiful woman?” asked Milton. You could tell by the way he asked the question that would do it for him.

“Not that, so much,” he answered. “She’s pretty and all, I know.”

“So what?”

“She really likes sex,” said Rob. Milton made a face that would be hard to describe, but it included an element of anguish.

“Ah,” he said, eventually, then took another long pull on his Winston. “Um … how much?”

“A lot.”

“Is there any way you can quantify this for us?” asked Milton.

“Two or three times a day,” Rob answered. A pause.

“Every day?”

“Sure. More on weekends. Sometimes on weekends we never get out of bed except to eat.”

“Wow.”

“You know how she is. Such a perfectionist. We do things over and over until we get them right,” Rob said.

“Christ on a crutch,” said Milton. There was a long pause while Milton looked out the window. “You’re aware you’re an extremely lucky son of a bitch, I suppose?”

“Oh, good Lord yes,” said Rob. Another pause.

“So where was she off to?” I asked. There weren’t many afternoon classes. For some reason, most of them were in the morning.

“I don’t know, she never tells me. I just know she expects me to be in my dorm room at ten tonight. Anyway, I need to be going,” Rob said. We bid him goodbye, and Milton took the last puff off of his butt.

“I am never going to get laid,” said Milton, staring morosely out the window. Then, after another few seconds’ pause, “Man, did you see her?” and shook his head.

Chapter 17a, in which Mary talks to Midshipman Wilmot

“I don’t know. I don’t even know how to ask my pastor about this. Or even my mother. Anyway, I gotta go? It’s been … interesting?” She smiled sweetly but somewhat artificially, stood, said “Groovy,” and was about to walk away when Milton and Brian from my dorm showed up, said hi, and made to sit down. Brian was wearing a United States Navy uniform, which was unexpected. He was without cover, which his commanding officer would not have liked, and was wearing rank insignias I did not recognize. There were little anchors on his shoulder boards.

“Hi, Mary,” said Brian.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said, and put her tray back down. “You look sooooo good in uniform.”

“Hi,” said Milton, and put out his hand towards Mary. “I’m Milton.” She didn’t notice. Mary sat down, so the rest of us did, too.

“So have you read the assignment for our English class?” Mary asked Brian. She resumed eating bits of her salad, which she seemed ready to throw away a few seconds before.

“Not yet. I oughta introduce everybody, I guess, on account of I’m the only one here who knows everybody. Mary, this here’s Henry Baida, he lives down the hall from me.”

“Him I know, she said, and flashed a smile at me, and then one back at Brian.

“This here’s Jimmy Milton, also from the dorm,” he said.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said. Milton stuck out his hand and opened his mouth as if to speak, but she had already turned her attention back to Brian,

“So do you like Eliot?” she asked Brian.

“Who?” he said.

“T.S. Eliot.” Brian stared back blankly. “He wrote the poem we have to read by tomorrow,” she said.

“Which one?” he asked.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” she said.

“Oh, yeah,” he answered. “We read that in high school. ‘I grow old, I grow old, I will wear my trousers rolled.’”

“That’s it!” she said, a little too loudly. “So you love Eliot?”

“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know that I understand it all, but some of it’s fun to think about.” Even I could tell that he was just trying to think of things she’d like to hear.

“Are you going to be an English major?” she asked. Milton was eating his sandwich, munching on his potato chips, shaking his head at pretty much all of Brian’s answers to Mary’s questions.

“No, I’m thinking I’ll go Ec/B.A.,” he answered.

“Eckbah?” she asked.

“Economics and Business Administration,” he said. “Sorry.”

“How funny,” she said. “I just naturally assumed you were more of an artist than an economist?”

“I dunno,” he said. “We don’t have to declare ‘til, what? Sophomore year? I was thinkin’ business on account of my Pa has this business and he wants me to come into it and it sounds like a pretty good gig, but it’s gonna be the same business whether I major in business or underwater basket weaving, so I dunno. Plus I got like this Navy trip to deal with, too.”

“What kind of business?” she asked.

“In Ec/BA?” he answered. “Doesn’t matter. Any kind of business.” He frowned in puzzlement and tried not to glance down at her breasts.

“No, no, I’m sorry?” she said. “I mean what kind of business is it your father is in.?”

“Oh. Gotcha. We make sportswear,” said Brian. Milton, lunch finished, propped his head on his right hand and looked out the window toward the Old Science building in silent despair, shaking his head at what he considered to be Brian’s inept responses to Mary’s questions.

“Like shoes?” she asked.

“No, no. Like tee shirts. Sweat pants. Shorts.”

“How fun!” she said. “And you’re in, what, the Navy?”

“Yeah. Sure. NROTC.” She frowned and shook her head. “Naval ROTC.”

“ROTC?” she asked. Milton looked at her, trying to decide if she was an idiot or not.

“Reserve Officer Training Corps,” said Brian.

“So you’re like a sailor?”

“Yeah. When I graduate I’ll be an reserve ensign in the Navy. That’s an officer. I’ll serve for three years.”

“And a reserve officer is one that only gets called up when they call up the Reserves?” she asked.

“No. I’ll serve even if the Reserves don’t get called up,” he said. “Being a reserve officer doesn’t make me part of the Reserves.”

“Why not?” she asked. Brian paused and tried to think through his answer.

“They’re like two different things,” he said. She made a slightly frowning face and looked at her watch.

“So after you graduate you’re going to be on a ship with nothing but men for three years and a Naval officer?”

“Yeah. I want to do jets.”

“Meaning you want to be a pilot?”

“That’s Air Force talk. In the Navy, we call ourselves Naval Aviators.” She smiled sweetly at him.

“Where’s your hat?” she asked. Brian’s face registered instant concern. He looked around, patted himself, looked at the floor, thought back.

“Oh, fuck!” he said. “I musta left it at the Training Center. They make us learn knots and shit. Oh, Hell. The C.O.’s gonna kick my ass.” He stood immediately and scrambled towards the door, leaving his tray behind. Mary looked at him leave and smiled sweetly at his departing figure.

She looked at Milton and me. “Do you know if he’s Christian?” she asked.

“Hi, I’m Milton,” said Milton, extending his hand.

“Hello. Milton what?” she asked.

“Jimmy Milton,” he said. “It’s a last name.”

“So do you know if Brian’s accepted Jesus as his personal savior?” she asked.

“He hasn’t said,” said Milton.

“What can you tell me about him?” she asked, looking back and forth between us.

“All I know is that he’s from South Jersey. Cherry Hill, down by Philly,” said Milton. She looked at me.

“He’s a Phils fan,” I said. She stared back blankly. “He likes baseball and follows the National league. His favorite team is the Philadelphia Phillies, which is on the verge of being eliminated from playoff consideration. He doesn’t approve of the Designated Hitter Rule.” Milton rolled his eyes.

“The what?” she asked.

“The Designated Hitter Rule.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s a rule in the American League that allows a player who does not play a defensive position to appear in the line-up.” She gave me a confused look.

“So it’s a sports deal?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, and stood. “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure,” she said, and walked off.

Milton pulled out a cigarette and lit it. It was brown and slightly slimmer than most cigarettes I saw. He lit it from a matchbook with one hand by curling the match around to the striking surface with his thumb. I’d never seen a cigarette like this before and wasn’t entirely sure what he was smoking.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Sherman,” he asked, and pulled a red pack of Shermans out of his shirt pocket to show. He shook it towards me to offer me one.

“No, thanks,” I said. “Don’t smoke.” He put his Shermans away.

“So what’s your take on Mary’s take on Brian?” he asked, staring again out the window.

“She’s interested.”

“Ya’ think?” he answered.

“I take it you agree?”

“She’s about to throw herself at him like Vida Blue would throw to Pete Rose in a World Series game.”

“Something about a man in uniform,” I said.

“I’m never gonna get laid,” he said. He stared out the window and smoked his cigarette. “You N.L. guys are so hidebound,” he said, after a pause. “There’s a designated hitter. Get used to it.”

“So is a baseball,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“Hidebound.”

“No doubt you think that’s clever.” I did chuckle.